elliot richardson

 
In this episode we are going to step back to October of 1973. The singular event that changes everything in Watergate was the Saturday Night Massacre. When we originally told the story we did so from the overall perspective of the Nixon White House and the news media that covered it. We travel back in this episode and let you hear the story from the oral histories of the members of the Special Prosecutor's office whose boss was fired.

It is, we thought, the best way to introduce you to several people whose oral histories will take you to the very end of our Podcast Documentary look at Richard Nixon. While this episode centers more on the Special Prosecutors you will hear from two top level Nixon staffers, Ray Price and an oral history of Alexander Haig, read by me. You will also hear from Elliot Richardson, William Ruckelshaus, and Robert Bork.

But at the end you will get a play by play from three members of the special prosecutor's office we have only brushed upon in our earlier episodes. They are the number two man in the office, Henry Ruth, who will one day become the Special Prosecutor,  along with Richard Ben Veniste, and Jill Wine Banks.  It will give you some insight as to what it was like for those in the office on the night of the firing of Archibald Cox.

This is the first of three episodes centered on the people of the Watergate Scandal and their roles in it.

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SHOWDOWN!!

There was no question that after a junior officer of the Federal Government faced down the President of the United States on National Television that that junior officer was not going to have his job long and Archibald Cox didn't.  Richard Nixon ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire him. Richardson refused, as did his next in line William Ruckelshaus before finally the true hero of the night stepped up and did the deed. Robert Bork, the Solicitor General, fired Cox and then held the Justice Department together for two and a half months all while being under attack for having done the right thing,  Richard Nixon was , contrary to popular belief, justified in that decision. 

We were dangerously close to a war with the Soviet Union as both sides sat on the sidelines helping the two sides of a conflict in the Middle East. In fact, this was the closest the two nations had come since the Cuban Missile Crisis a decade before. There was no way that Richard Nixon was going to let Archibald Cox, nor his Special Prosecution Force, get away with such insubordination at such a moment. I would dare say that the history you have read about would have looked totally different had it involved any other President other than Richard Nixon. That is how egregious this act by Cox was no matter how avuncular he appeared that night on television. 

The chain of events this situation set off changed everything for President Nixon and it was largely in my opinion unfair. Archibald Cox should never have been appointed in the first place. He was a known Nixon hater, puppet of the Kennedy family, and he loaded up his staff with rabid partisans that either came from the Kennedy-Johnson Administrations or were prosecutors who had spent years chasing gangsters and treated the Nixon staffers as though they were members of a crime family. 

From this point on Richard Nixon was at war with a prosecution staff , who in my opinion, was willing to do , say, and perform any sleight of hand necessary to get the only target they were actually focused on, the facts be damned. And that target was Richard Nixon, and they cared not who all's lives they had to ruin to do it. 

FYI - We will be returning to this event in next seasons shows,

Ranked 4th as one of the best American History Podcasts of 2024
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Questions or comments at , Randalrgw1@aol.com , https://twitter.com/randal_wallace , and http://www.randalwallace.com/
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Spiro Agnew resigns on October 10, 1973, the Arab Forces go on another offensive on October 11, 1973 all the while the Special Prosecutor's continue to push forward trying to get their hands on the Presidential recordings. Tom Brokaw of NBC News is right to describe the situation as "Richard Nixon was a President under siege." He seemed to be facing historic level crisis everywhere he looked. 

Nixon went right to work to insure the Israeli government  would have everything they needed to defend themselves and he was given some hope by his Attorney General that finally a deal could be struck not to hand over the tapes. He was determined not to give in to the mounting pressure of allowing the prosecutor's free run over the Nixon White House. That hope would turn out to be false. 

Attorney General Elliot Richardson would waffle around on a proposal for third party verification of the tapes, in a compromise originally proposed by Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox himself. But when it was originally proposed Richard Nixon had turned the idea down and pursued his options in court. The court would rule against him 5 -2 but add that they wanted the party's to find a deal themselves. So Richardson took the initiative to re propose the compromise that had been earlier rejected.  It is a little murky as to what exactly happened or if it was all a misunderstanding  but an idea was proposed that a prominent, well respected Senator, John Stennis, a Democrat from Mississippi would listen to the tapes and verify what he heard on them. 

Stennis was a man of unquestioned character, (though he was a southerner and a segregationist) , he was also elderly, hard of hearing, and a huge supporter of the Republican President.  The Prosecutors wanted  no part of this deal and I actually can understand the reasoning on this point. However, it was Archibald Cox's idea, and though he now had a court decision saying he should get the tapes  he had asked for,  it could  reasonably be argued that in good faith he should have honored his original proposal. But either way he chose to hold a press conference and face down the President of the United States while the President was dealing with an enormous crisis in Israel and for that a showdown became inevitable. 

This episode takes you right up to that moment just before the most famous of showdowns happened and it  includes Archibald Cox's press conference. 

Ranked 4th as one of the best American History Podcasts of 2024
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Questions or comments at , Randalrgw1@aol.com , https://twitter.com/randal_wallace , and http://www.randalwallace.com/
Please Leave us a review at wherever you get your podcasts
Thanks for listening!!